Emmer is the apparent frontrunner for the Republican endorsement in the open seat created in Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District with the retirement of Representative Michele Bachmann.

This morning he doesn’t disappoint Bluestem’s expectations for providing great blogger fodder, as he gives a short testimonial for Integrity Exteriors and Remodelers, Inc., an Anoka-based general contractor with headquarters in Anoka. According to records on file with the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, Andrew Dahlberg, Elk River, serves as Chief Executive Officer of the firm.

A quick check with the Federal Election Commission and the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board individual contributor databases reveals that Dahlberg does not appear to have made any federal or state campaign contributions large enough to require disclosure by either agency.

The ad may raise eyebrows–if not legal questions–because Emmer introduces the testimonial ad as a candidate running for congress, while standing before a yard sign.

Just go and read Sally’s piece, and watch the (unintentionally) hilarious ad Emmer did. It’s straight out of The Onion.

(This is the first edition of the Guide. The most recent edition is here.)

As the current Brodkorbian-Kochian phase of the Fall of the House of Sutton unfolds, I thought it might be useful to take a stab at detailing what most local Establishment media journalists, who are either ignorant as paint or fearful of losing their precious access to GOP powerbrokers, have neglected to explain: The existence of the factions that have for years been jockeying for control of the Republican Party of Minnesota and the politicians running under their banners.

This refusal to delineate the factions and agendas of the Minnesota GOP’s most prominent players and their conservative fellow travelers makes for incoherent (as well as flat-out wrong) reporting on the key issues that affect Minnesota. For example as Sally Jo Sorensen of Bluestem Prairie explains, when Tony Sutton claimed in his farewell letter as RPM Chair that shifting responsibility for the recount from the gubernatorial campaign to the party was what the RPM gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer had wanted and not Sutton, no local establishment journalist dared contradict him even though the evidence undermining Sutton’s claims was so obvious Stevie Wonder could have seen it. Ms. Sorensen isn’t afraid to mention who is allied to whom (and who hates whom) here. Understanding this helps to understand Minnesota Republican politics, where the bigwigs in the factions carry more weight than do their stooges in the legislature.

The two main factions in the Minnesota Republican Party are the Sutton/Brodkorb/Seifert faction, and the Emmer/Tea Party/TheoCon faction. There are other, smaller groups that make or break alliances as the need arises, but the Sutton and Emmer factions are the main two to be reckoned with. One of the smaller factions, the anti-gambling CAGE faction led by Annette and Jack Meeks, has been at times allied with, and fought against, both of the big factions; conversely, the pro-gambling faction also has ties to both sides. There are individuals, such as Michael Wigley, with a foot in both camps; he backed Emmer for governor in 2010, but he’s also been close enough to the Suttons and Coopers to be given a now-defunct Baja Sol franchise as part of the Sutton-Cooper efforts to turn Baja Sol into a moneymaker turkey farm capable of providing income to Republican operatives and fellow travelers. And of course there’s the powerful group of Twin-City-suburban and Rochester-area state Senators, the Gang of Four, but their agenda is usually more about preservation of the party and its legislative caucus than anything else.

The Sutton faction is the one that is representative of the party establishment and which is generally backed by the Mr. Burns of Minnesota Republican politics, the Cooper family whose billions come from the TCF financial empire; they also (at least until last week) generally have the backing of the top Republican Senators known to Republican detractors like Sue Jeffers as the “Gang of Four”: Dave Senjem, David Hann, Geoff Michel, and Chris Gerlach. The Emmer faction has among it such marginally-electable Bible-banger folks as Minnesota’s own answer to Rick Santorum, Allen Quist.

Follow me past the jump for a chart, by no means complete, of the players, their factions, their relationships, and their desires. Feel free to tell me about any I missed.Read the rest of this entry »

For the record: John Hugh Gilmore is not an employee of Andrew Breitbart. While he is a conservative blogger (of the Minnesota Conservatives blog), he does have some standards.

Gilmore lives in St. Paul, and is a pretty big wheel in Minnesota Republican politics, being in tight with the Marty Seifert and Ben Golnik/Gregg Peppin crowd as well as being a prominent Republican Party of Minnesota functionary in State Senate District 65 and a state central committee member. He backed Seifert in the 2010 Republican race for the gubernatorial nomination, but dutifully (albeit reluctantly) climbed onto the wildly careening Emmer bandwagon once Emmer’s nomination was a done deal.

.The story started the night before when two women ventured into the streets of Minneapolis wearing the traditional Hijab (headscarf.) They were approached by John Hugh Gilmore, a 52 year attorney and self described Conservative who blogs for “Minnesota Conservatives.” According to police, he asked the women what they thought of Ayaan Hersi Ali, a Somali who is a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who decries Muslims. The women told him they weren’t exactly fans. The inebriated Gilmore then became upset and started harassing the pair, asking what right they had to be in this country, until 60 onlookers intervened. Police were called and arrested Gilmore, but not until Gilmore tried to reach Andrew Breitbart on his phone.

A Red Wing Republican senator is offering to donate money to help the Republican Party of Minnesota pay bills owed to several counties for last fall’s gubernatorial recount.

Sen. John Howe said it is time for the party to pay back these bills. In a letter he sent to members of the Republican caucus obtained by the Post-Bulletin, he wrote “ This is embarrassing and painfully indefensible. This damages us not just on the local level, but statewide as well. It is spreading through the political blogs, and must be a reason for much head shaking in water cooler conversations.” [emphasis added]

Asked about the letter, Howe said he never intended for it to be public.

Ah, but it gets better:

It appears that former GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer is also working to get the bills paid. Houston County Auditor Char Meiners said she was pleasantly surprised to get a call from Emmer on Monday asking for a copy of the bill telling her he was going to try and get it paid. The party owes Houston County $1,067. Emmer did not return a phone call seeking comment on Monday.

Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman Tony Sutton said there is no need for Emmer or Howe to chip in. [emphasis added] He said the party sent out payments to eight counties last week. He said of the 87 counties in Minnesota, the party still owes money to 20 of them for a total of just under $20,000. Olmsted, Dodge and Mower counties are among those that have been paid back. He said the party plans to finish paying back counties shortly.

What is Netroots Nation 11? It’s the 2011 gathering of progressive activists from all over America — and from much of the rest of the world as well — and it’s being held in Minneapolis this year. Or, as the folks behind Netroots Nation say:

Netroots Nation amplifies progressive voices by providing an online and in-person campus for exchanging ideas and learning how to be more effective in using technology to influence the public debate. Through our annual convention and a series of regional salons held throughout the year, we strengthen our community, inspire action and serve as an incubator for ideas that challenge the status quo and ultimately affect change in the public sphere.

If the goal of the Republicans is to drag out the count, by frivolous ballot challenges or frivolous lawsuits, so that Pawlenty can remain governor come January, the last thing they’d want to see is a nasty lingering scandal wrapped around him. That would make the public less amenable to their grandstandings.

Hennepin County Elections Manager Rachel Smith says she has heard Republican recount leaders urging their workers to challenge more ballots in Minnesota’s Gubernatorial recount. She says the challenges made by Republican Tom Emmer’s campaign have been “a bit unnecessary”. Over the past two days in Hennepin County alone there have been close to 1,000 ballot challenges that were ruled “frivolous”. All but a handful of those frivolous challenges were made by the Emmer campaign. She showed the press some of those challenged ballots which included one with a fully filled in oval for Mark Dayton. The Emmer campaign challenged the ballot questioning the “voter intent”.